All posts tagged management

Some bosses inspire. Others terrify. And their presence has the greatest effect on workplace productivity.

Researchers have spent a lot of time studying workplace peers and teams, but surprisingly little on the impact of supervisors.

In a step toward filling this gap, a trio of business school professors studied a large firm whose workers perform technology-based services that are monitored by computer, providing ready productivity data.

Most, with a bit of touching-up of the prose and the imagery, would fit in quite well in the modern workplace. (And these are decidedly business-oriented motivational themes.) But there’s a foreign-seeming melding of the domestic and the industrial in the message of the one titled, “Mother’s Hope for You,” which is accompanied by an illustration of a stern yet kindly older woman:

Success and happiness — the Respect and good will of your fellow workers — the confidence of the Firm — your Progress. She Has Counted Upon You to Win.

For good or ill, you don’t get the sense that today’s workers spend a lot of time pondering what mom thinks of their workplace demeanor.

Biographies

Gary Rosen is the editor of Review and the former managing editor of Commentary magazine. His articles and reviews have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. He is the author of "American Compact: James Madison and the Problem of Founding" and the editor of "The Right War? The Conservative Debate on Iraq."